“Oh, I haven’t been anywhere for a long time and I decided to start in with that. You know, when I go swimming I don’t like to torture myself getting into cold water by degrees. I dive right in and it’s a nasty shock, but after that the rest is not so hard to take.”
“What do you mean? What do you really see that’s so wrong with that meeting? After all, we’re not planning to do anything definite. We don’t have any actual program. I don’t even know what we were there for.”
“That’s it, Peter. You don’t even know what you were there for.”
“It’s only a group for fellows to get together. Mostly to talk. What harm is there in that?”
“Peter, I’m tired.”
“Well, did your appearance tonight mean at least that you’re coming out of your seclusion?”
“Yes. Just that…My seclusion?”
“I’ve tried and tried to get in touch with you, you know.”
“Have you?”
“Shall I begin to tell you how happy I am to see you again?”
“No. Let’s consider that you’ve told me.”
“You know, you’ve changed, Dominique. I don’t know exactly in what way, but you’ve changed.”
“Have I?”
“Let’s consider that I’ve told you how lovely you are, because I can’t find words to say it.”
The streets were dark. He called a cab. Sitting close to her, he turned and looked at her directly, his glance compelling like an open hint, hoping to make the silence significant between them. She did not turn away. She sat studying his face. She seemed to be wondering, attentive to some thought of her own which he could not guess. He reached over slowly and took her hand. He felt an effort in her hand, he could feel through her rigid fingers the effort of her whole arm, not an effort to withdraw her hand, but to let him hold it. He raised the hand, turned it over and pressed his lips to her wrist.
Then he looked at her face. He dropped her hand and it remained suspended in the air for an instant, the fingers stiff, half closed. This was not the indifference he remembered. This was revulsion, so great that it became impersonal, it could not offend him, it seemed to include more than his person. He was suddenly aware of her body; not in desire or resentment, but just aware of its presence close to him, under her dress. He whispered involuntarily:
“Dominique, who was he?”
She whirled to face him. Then he saw her eyes narrowing. He saw her lips relaxing, growing fuller, softer, her mouth lengthening slowly into a faint smile, without opening. She answered, looking straight at him:
“A workman in the granite quarry.”
She succeeded; he laughed aloud.
“Serves me right, Dominique. I shouldn’t suspect the impossible.”
“Peter, isn’t it strange? It was you that I thought I could make myself want, at one time.”
“Why is that strange?”
“Only in thinking how little we know about ourselves. Some day you’ll know the truth about yourself too, Peter, and it will be worse for you than for most of us. But you don’t have to think about it. It won’t come for a long time.”
“You did want me, Dominique?”
“I thought I could never want anything and you suited that so well.”
“I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know what you ever think you’re saying. I know that I’ll always love you. And I won’t let you disappear again. Now that you’re back…”
“Now that I’m back, Peter, I don’t want to see you again. Oh, I’ll have to see you when we run into each other, as we will, but don’t call on me. Don’t come to see me. I’m not trying to offend you, Peter. It’s not that. You’ve done nothing to make me angry. It’s something in myself that I don’t want to face again. I’m sorry to choose you as the example. But you suit so well. You–Peter, you’re everything I despise in the world and I don’t want to remember how much I despise it. If I let myself remember–I’ll return to it. This is not an insult to you, Peter. Try to understand that. You’re not the worst of the world. You’re its best. That’s what’s frightening. If I ever come back to you–don’t let me come. I’m saying this now because I can, but if I come back to you, you won’t be able to stop me, and now is the only time when I can warn you.”
“I don’t know,” he said in cold fury, his lips stiff, “what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t try to know. It doesn’t matter. Let’s just stay away from each other. Shall we?”
“I’ll never give you up.”
She shrugged. “All right, Peter. This is the only time I’ve ever been kind to you. Or to anyone.”
6.
ROGER ENRIGHT had started life as a coal miner in Pennsylvania. On his way to the millions he now owned, no one had ever helped him. “That,” he explained, “is why no one has ever stood in my way.” A great many things and people had stood in his way, however; but he had never noticed them. Many incidents of his long career were not admired; none was whispered about. His career had been glaring and public like a billboard. He made a poor subject for blackmailers or debunking biographers. Among the wealthy he was disliked for having become wealthy so crudely.
He hated bankers, labor unions, women, evangelists and the stock exchange. He had never bought a share of stock nor sold a share in any of his enterprises, and he owned his fortune single-handed, as simply as if he carried all his cash in his pocket. Besides his oil business he owned a publishing house, a restaurant, a radio shop, a garage, a plant manufacturing electric refrigerators. Before each new venture he studied the field for a long time, then proceeded to act as if he had never heard of it, upsetting all precedent. Some of his ventures were successful, others failed. He continued running them all with ferocious energy. He worked twelve hours a day.
When he decided to erect a building, he spent six months looking for an architect. Then he hired Roark at the end of their first interview, which lasted half an hour. Later, when the drawings were made, he gave orders to proceed with construction at once. When Roark began to speak about the drawings, Enright interrupted him: “Don’t explain. It’s no use explaining abstract ideals to me. I’ve never had any ideals. People say I’m completely immoral. I go only by what I like. But I do know what I like.”
Roark never mentioned the attempt he had made to reach Enright, nor his interview with the bored secretary. Enright learned of it somehow. Within five minutes the secretary was discharged, and within ten minutes he was walking out of the office, as ordered, in the middle of a busy day, a letter left half typed in his machine.
Roark reopened his office, the same big room on the top of an old building. He enlarged it by the addition of an adjoining room–for the draftsmen he hired in order to keep up with the planned lightning schedule of construction. The draftsmen were young and without much experience. He had never heard of them before and he did not ask for letters of recommendation. He chose them from among many applicants, merely by glancing at their drawings for a few minutes.
In the crowded tension of the days that followed he never spoke to them, except of their work. They felt, entering the office in the morning, that they had no private lives, no significance and no reality save the overwhelming reality of the broad sheets of paper on their tables. The place seemed cold and soulless like a factory, until they looked at him; then they thought that it was not a factory, but a furnace fed on their bodies, his own first.
There were times when he remained in the office all night. They found him still working when they returned in the morning. He did not seem tired. Once he stayed there for two days and two nights in succession. On the afternoon of the third day he fell asleep, half lying across his table. He awakened in a few hours, made no comment and walked from one table to another, to see what had been done. He made corrections, his words sounding as if nothing had interrupted a thought begun some hours ago.
“You’re unbearable when you’re working, Howard,” Austen Heller told him one evening, even though he had not spoken of his work at all.
“Why?” he asked, astonished.
“It’s uncomfortable to be in the same room with you. Tension is contagious, you know.”
“What tension? I feel completely natural only when I’m working.”
“That’s it. You’re completely natural only when you’re one inch from bursting into pieces. What in hell are you really made of, Howard? After all, it’s only a building. It’s not the combination of holy sacrament, Indian torture and sexual ecstasy that you seem to make of it.”